Chicago Tunnel Railway - Grand Central diorama

[Dunalastair]

I previously posted about my 3D printed diorama of a tunnel intersection on the Chicago Tunnel Railway. I have more recently been working on a diorama based on this photograph in the wiki article on the railway. This shows what was apparently a short-lived service for US Mail, linking the major Chicago rail terminals. The car is an RPO (Railway Post Office) of the Pere Marquette at Grand Central Station about 1910. I know very little about US railroads, and it has been interesting learning about mail operations across the Pond. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company

 

Looking for a more complete image of an RPO of that era I found this, from the Lehigh road.

 

 

I then struck lucky, and found this joint PM car. I believe that much of the design was mandated by the customer, who wanted safer cars for their employees, many of whom had been killed in earlier train wrecks.

 

https://biblio.co.uk/book/pere-marquette-passenger-pictorial-million-arthur/d/1343138037#gallery-7

 

Keeping up my 'diorama-a-day', now coming towards the end, I roughed out a 3D design, incorporating a 'low relief' half-section of the RPO. As it happened, I had some suitable six-wheel bogies / trucks, one of which has been sectioned to save the complexity that would otherwise entail.

 

 

So here is my kit of printed parts. The Bettendorf Tunnel Railway wagon uses Peco NG bogies.

 

 

And after some painting and assembly, this is what we have. I could perhaps have sourced a better looking commercial RPO model, but I try to minimise cost on my dioramas, and that might have meant spending serious money. I hope that US outline modellers will forgive the liberties I have taken with their chosen prototype.

 

 

This is still work in progress. Since the photograph was taken, the parts have been glued to a base, with the platform raised a little compared to the track - but not too much as this is the US. I still need a few figures to give a sense of scale and echo the original photograph, and the RPO could do with some under-body equipment.

[BR60103]

Where I grew up (Eastern Ontario) the platform was raised to about rail height. The baggage trucks were then at about floor height for the baggage and mail cars.

I understand that the US Mail had a standard layout for the inside of the mail cars.